2025 Bienal de São Paulo

Gokula Stoffel's (b. 1988, Port Alegre, Brazil) artwork emerges from a dialogue with her environment and materials that center around ideas of sentimentality, memory, the subconscious, and an exchange with the creative act. Her preoccupation with representation today is evident in her paintings, which go beyond "painting". Gokula uses a variety of media - found materials, porcelain and glass, paint, and woven fibers - to freely and intuitively approach her art-making. She embraces spontaneity and allows latent forms and unplanned images to surface in careful layers of figurative and abstract gesture. She is represented by Brazilian gallery, Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel.

Lorenzo Lo Schiavo and Cléo Döbberthin's friendship began long before their design studio, Palma, did. The duo met in their first year studying architecture in the same program in São Paulo but lost touch for a number of years when Döbberthin transferred schools to study fine art. Mutual friends brought them back together during the pandemic, and when Lo Schiavo was approached to create an immersive retail project on a tight budget and timeline he brough in Döbberthin's expertise in sculpture. They joined forces and shortly after established their studio, Palma. "Many traditional handcrafts here have disappeared, so we re-create techniques that interest us." 

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, chief curator of the Bienal de São Paulo, has formed a diverse team to bring this concept to life. The co-curators are Alya Sebti, Anna Roberta Goetz, and Thiago de Paula Souza, working alongside co-curator-at-large Keyna Eleison and communication advisor Henriette Gallus. Titled "Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice," the exhibition draws its name from a line in the poem "Da calma e do silêncio" (Of calm and silence) by Afrobrazilian poet Conceição Evaristo. In a press release, the curatorial team stated that the biennial's aim is "to rethink humanity as a verb, a living practice, in a world that requires reimagining relationships, asymmetries and listening as the basis for coexistence."

The Casa de Vidro, also known as the Glass House, is a landmark of modernist architecture located in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Designed by renowned Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi in 1950, the house served as her and her husband Pietro Maria Bardi's home for four decades. The name of the house is derived from its striking glass facade, which gives the illusion of floating due to its minimalist column structure. With its innovative design, the Casa de Vidro continues to be a symbol of Lina Bo Bardi's avant-garde architectural style and is considered one of the most important works of modern architecture in Brazil. Lina Bo Bardi designed many famous architectural sites throughout her career, but the Museum of Art São Paulo is arguably her most iconic design. 

Through his formal vocabulary, Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto (b. 1964) engages with the idea of social interaction. Neto has gained acclaim for his large experimental sculptures and installations that dramatically alter our surroundings, activating the senses and inviting viewer participation. The unconventional choice of materials, the simultaneity of internal and external structures, the contrast between the organic and the mechanical, and the qualities of sensuality and tactility, are all deeply inherent to the artist's practice. Neto's installations draw on the lessons of minimalist sculpture, New Brazilian Objectivity of the 1960s and 70s, and anthropomorphic architecture, transporting the viewer from the hustle and bustle of everyday existence into immersive, multi-sensory environments where time seems to slow down. Constantly producing new formal and conceptual developments in his work, Neto describes his sculptures as living organisms that transgress all limitations. Speaking of his work in a 2000 interview, Neto said, "I am wrapping air, making atmospheres physical."